The present invention relates to an optical connector mounted and arranged in e.g., a vehicle, and used in optical communication within the vehicle.
Intelligence technologies of a vehicle has been recently developed rapidly. For example, a vehicle position is displayed on a map by using a car navigation system. Further, management such as snarl dissolution of the vehicle is performed by utilizing an ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems). In accordance with such intelligence technologies, a processing amount of communication information such as data, images and voices within the vehicle has increased.
Therefore, the optical communication using an optical fiber as an information transmitting medium of large capacity has been performed within the vehicle such as an automobile. This optical communication is performed by making light emitted from a light emitting element incident to one end side of the optical fiber, and propagating this light in the optical fiber, and receiving this propagated light by a light receiving element arranged on the other end side of the optical fiber. An optical connector is generally used when the optical fiber is connected to an optical element such as the light emitting element and the light receiving element.
A plastic optical fiber has a large aperture and is easily treated in comparison with a glass optical fiber. Therefore, the plastic optical fiber is often applied as an optical fiber for the communication within the vehicle.
An optical connector of the present invention comprises:
a receptacle connector; and
a plug connector fitted to the receptacle connector;
wherein a connecting end face side of a multimode optical fiber is fixed to the plug connector; and
a light emitting element having a radiation numerical aperture larger than the numerical aperture of the multimode optical fiber, and a convergent lens for converging light emitted from the light emitting element so as to provide an incident numerical aperture smaller than the numerical aperture of the multimode optical fiber and making this light incident to the multimode optical fiber are arranged in the receptacle connector.